Magic Terror

by Peter Straub

  “It is quite all right,” I said. “All is in order, all is in train.” New Covenant had just entered the sanctum.

  Barnie-slyness, barnie-freedom shone from their great, round gap-toothed faces: in precisely the manner I remembered, these two suggested mocking peasant violence scantily disguised by an equally mocking impersonation of convention. Small wonder that they had intimidated Mrs. Rampage and her underlings, for their nearest exposure to a like phenomenon had been with our musicians, and when offstage they were pale, emaciated fellows of little physical vitality. Clothed in black suits, white shirts, and black neckties, holding their black derbies by their brims and turning their gappy smiles back and forth between Mrs. Rampage and myself, these barnies had evidently been loose in the world for some time. They were perfect for my task. You will be irritated by their country manners, you will be annoyed by their native insubordination, I told myself, but you will never find men more suitable, so grant them what latitude they need. I directed Mrs. Rampage to cancel all telephone calls and appointments for the next hour.

  The door closed, and we were alone. Each of the black-suited darlings snapped a business card from his right jacket pocket and extended it to me with a twirl of the fingers. One card read:

  MR. CLUBB AND MR. CUFF

  Private Detectives Extraordinaire

  MR. CLUBB

  and the other:

  MR. CLUBB AND MR. CUFF

  Private Detectives Extraordinaire

  MR. CUFF

  I inserted the cards into a pocket and expressed my delight at making their acquaintance.

  “Becoming aware of your situation,” said Mr. Clubb, “we preferred to report as quickly as we could.”

  “Entirely commendable,” I said. “Will you gentlemen please sit down?”

  “We prefer to stand,” said Mr. Clubb.

  “I trust you will not object if I again take my chair,” I said, and did so. “To be honest, I am reluctant to describe the whole of my problem. It is a personal matter, therefore painful.”

  “It is a domestic matter,” said Mr. Cuff.

  I stared at him. He stared back with the sly imperturbability of his kind.

  “Mr. Cuff,” I said, “you have made a reasonable and, as it happens, an accurate supposition, but in the future you will please refrain from speculation.”

  “Pardon my plain way of speaking, sir, but I was not speculating,” he said. “Marital disturbances are domestic by nature.”

  “All too domestic, one might say,” put in Mr. Clubb. “In the sense of pertaining to the home. As we have so often observed, you find your greatest pain right smack-dab in the living room, as it were.”

  “Which is a somewhat politer fashion of naming another room altogether.” Mr. Cuff appeared to suppress a surge of barnie-glee.

  Alarmingly, Charlie-Charlie had passed along altogether too much information, especially since the information in question should not have been in his possession. For an awful moment I imagined that the dismissed investigator had spoken to Charlie-Charlie. The man may have broadcast my disgrace to every person encountered on his final journey out of my office, inside the public elevator, thereafter even to the shoeshine “boys” and cup-rattling vermin lining the streets. It occurred to me that I might be forced to have the man silenced. Symmetry would then demand the silencing of valuable Charlie-Charlie. The inevitable next step would resemble a full-scale massacre.

  My faith in Charlie-Charlie banished these fantasies by suggesting an alternate scenario and enabled me to endure the next utterance.

  Mr. Clubb said, “Which in plainer terms would be to say the bedroom.”

  After speaking to my faithful spy, the Private Detectives Extraordinaire had taken the initiative by acting as if already employed and following Marguerite to her afternoon assignation at the —— Hotel. Here, already, was the insubordination I had foreseen, but instead of the expected annoyance I felt a thoroughgoing gratitude for the two men leaning slightly toward me, their animal senses alert to every nuance of my response. That they had come to my office armed with the essential secret absolved me from embarrassing explanations; blessedly, the hideous photographs would remain concealed in the bottom drawer.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, “I applaud your initiative.”

  They stood at ease. “Then we have an understanding,” said Mr. Clubb. “At various times, various matters come to our attention. At these times we prefer to conduct ourselves according to the wishes of our employer, regardless of difficulty.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “However, from this point forward I must insist—”

  A rap at the door cut short my admonition. Mrs. Rampage brought in a coffeepot and cup, a plate beneath a silver cover, a rack with four slices of toast, two jam pots, silverware, a linen napkin, and a glass of water, and came to a halt some five or six feet short of the barnies. A sinfully arousing smell of butter and bacon emanated from the tray. Mrs. Rampage deliberated between placing my breakfast on the table to her left or venturing into proximity to my guests by bringing the tray to my desk. I gestured her forward, and she tacked wide to port and homed in on the desk. “All is in order, all is in train,” I said. She nodded and backed out—literally walked backward until she reached the door, groped for the knob, and vanished.

  I removed the cover from the plate containing two poached eggs in a cup-sized bowl, four crisp rashers of bacon, and a mound of home fried potatoes all the more welcome for being a surprise gift from our chef.

  “And now, fellows, with your leave I shall—”

  For the second time my sentence was cut off in midflow. A thick barnie-hand closed upon the handle of the coffeepot and proceeded to fill the cup. Mr. Clubb transported my coffee to his lips, smacked appreciatively at the taste, then took up a toast slice and plunged it like a dagger into my egg cup, releasing a thick yellow suppuration. He crunched the dripping toast between his teeth.

  At that moment, when mere annoyance passed into dumbfounded ire, I might have sent them packing despite my earlier resolution, for Mr. Clubb’s violation of my breakfast was as good as an announcement that he and his partner respected none of the conventional boundaries and would indulge in boorish, even disgusting behavior. I very nearly did send them packing, and both of them knew it. They awaited my reaction, whatever it should be. Then I understood that I was being tested, and half of my insight was that ordering them off would be a failure of imagination. I had asked Charlie-Charlie to send me serious men, not Boy Scouts, and in the rape of my breakfast were depths and dimensions of seriousness I had never suspected. In that instant of comprehension, I believe, I virtually knew all that was to come, down to the last detail, and gave a silent assent. My next insight was that the moment when I might have dismissed these fellows with a conviction of perfect rectitude had just passed, and with the sense of opening myself to unpredictable adventures I turned to Mr. Cuff. He lifted a rasher from my plate, folded it within a slice of toast, and displayed the result.

  “Here are our methods in action,” he said. “We prefer not to go hungry while you gorge yourself, speaking freely, for the one reason that all of this stuff represents what you ate every morning when you were a kid.” Leaving me to digest this shapeless utterance, he bit into his impromptu sandwich and sent golden-brown crumbs showering to the carpet.

  “For as the important, abstemious man you are now,” said Mr. Clubb, “what do you eat in the mornings?”

  “Toast and coffee,” I said. “That’s about it.”

  “But in childhood?”

  “Eggs,” I said. “Scrambled or fried, mainly. And bacon. Home fries, too.” Every fatty, cholesterol-crammed ounce of which, I forbore to add, had been delivered by barnie-hands directly from barnie-farms. I looked at the rigid bacon, the glistening potatoes, the mess in the egg cup. My stomach lurched.

  “We prefer,” Mr. Clubb said, “that you follow your true preferences instead of muddying mind and stomach by gobbling this crap in search of an inner peace tha
t never existed in the first place, if you can be honest with yourself.” He leaned over the desk and picked up the plate. His partner snatched a second piece of bacon and wrapped it within a second slice of toast. Mr. Clubb began working on the eggs, and Mr. Cuff grabbed a handful of home fried potatoes. Mr. Clubb dropped the empty egg cup, finished his coffee, refilled the cup, and handed it to Mr. Cuff, who had just finished licking the residue of fried potato from his free hand.

  I removed the third slice of toast from the rack. Forking home fries into his mouth, Mr. Clubb winked at me. I bit into the toast and considered the two little pots of jam, greengage, I think, and rosehip. Mr. Clubb waggled a finger. I contented myself with the last of the toast. After a while I drank from the glass of water. All in all I felt reasonably satisfied and, but for the deprivation of my customary cup of coffee, content with my decision. I glanced in some irritation at Mr. Cuff. He drained his cup, then tilted into it the third and final measure from the pot and offered it to me. “Thank you,” I said. Mr. Cuff picked up the pot of greengage jam and sucked out its contents, loudly. Mr. Clubb did the same with the rosehip. They sent their tongues into the corners of the jam pots and cleaned out whatever adhered to the sides. Mr. Cuff burped. Overlappingly, Mr. Clubb burped.

  “Now, that is what I call by the name of breakfast, Mr. Clubb,” said Mr. Cuff. “Are we in agreement?”

  “Deeply,” said Mr. Clubb. “That is what I call by the name of breakfast now, what I have called by the name of breakfast in the past, and what I shall continue to call by that sweet name on every morning in the future.” He turned to me and took his time, sucking first one tooth, then another. “Our morning meal, sir, consists of that simple fare with which we begin the day, except when in all good faith we wind up sitting in a waiting room with our stomachs growling because our future client has chosen to skulk in late for work.” He inhaled. “Which was for the same exact reason that brought him to our attention in the first place and for which we went without in order to offer him our assistance. Which is, begging your pardon, sir, the other reason for which you ordered a breakfast you would ordinarily rather starve than eat, and all I ask before we get down to the business at hand is that you might begin to entertain the possibility that simple men like ourselves might possibly understand a thing or two.”

  “I see that you are faithful fellows,” I began.

  “Faithful as dogs,” broke in Mr. Clubb.

  “And that you understand my position,” I continued.

  “Down to its smallest particulars,” he interrupted again. “We are on a long journey.”

  “And so it follows,” I pressed on, “that you must also understand that no further initiatives may be taken without my express consent.”

  These last words seemed to raise a disturbing echo—of what I could not say, but an echo nonetheless, and my ultimatum failed to achieve the desired effect. Mr. Clubb smiled and said, “We intend to follow your inmost desires with the faithfulness, as I have said, of trusted dogs, for one of our sacred duties is that of bringing these to fulfillment, as evidenced, begging your pardon, sir, in the matter of the breakfast our actions spared you from gobbling up and sickening yourself with. Before you protest, sir, please let me put to you the question of how you think you would be feeling right now if you had eaten that greasy stuff all by yourself?”

  The straightforward truth announced itself and demanded utterance. “Poisoned,” I said. After a second’s pause, I added, “Disgusted.”

  “Yes, for you are a better man than you know. Imagine the situation. Allow yourself to picture what would have transpired had Mr. Cuff and myself not acted on your behalf. As your heart throbbed and your veins groaned, you would have taken in that while you were stuffing yourself the two of us stood hungry before you. You would have remembered that good woman informing you that we had patiently awaited your arrival since eight this morning, and at that point, sir, you would have experienced a self-disgust which would forever have tainted our relationship. From that point forth, sir, you would have been incapable of receiving the full benefits of our services.”

  I stared at the twinkling barnie. “Are you saying that if I had eaten my breakfast you would have refused to work for me?”

  “You did eat your breakfast. The rest was ours.”

  This statement was so literally true that I burst into laughter. “Then I must thank you for saving me from myself. Now that you may accept employment, please inform me of the rates for your services.”

  “We have no rates,” said Mr. Clubb.

  “We prefer to leave compensation to the client,” said Mr. Cuff.

  This was crafty even by barnie-standards, but I knew a countermove. “What is the greatest sum you have ever been awarded for a single job?”

  “Six hundred thousand dollars,” said Mr. Clubb.

  “And the smallest?”

  “Nothing, zero, nada, zilch,” said the same gentleman.

  “And your feelings as to the disparity?”

  “None,” said Mr. Clubb. “What we are given is the correct amount. When the time comes, you shall know the sum to the penny.”

  To myself I said, So I shall, and it shall be nothing; to them, “We must devise a method by which I may pass along suggestions as I monitor your ongoing progress. Our future consultations should take place in anonymous public places on the order of street corners, public parks, diners, and the like. I must never be seen in your office.”

  “You must not, you could not,” said Mr. Clubb. “We would prefer to install ourselves here within the privacy and seclusion of your own beautiful office.”

  “Here?” He had once again succeeded in dumbfounding me.

  “Our installation within the client’s work space proves so advantageous as to overcome all initial objections,” said Mr. Cuff. “And in this case, sir, we would occupy but the single corner behind me where the table stands against the window. We would come and go by means of your private elevator, exercise our natural functions in your private bathroom, and have our simple meals sent in from your kitchen. You would suffer no interference or awkwardness in the course of your business. So we prefer to do our job here, where we can do it best.”

  “You prefer,” I said, giving equal weight to every word, “to move in with me.”

  “Prefer it to declining the offer of our help, thereby forcing you, sir, to seek the aid of less reliable individuals.”

  Several factors, first among them being the combination of delay, difficulty, and risk involved in finding replacements for the pair before me, led me to give further thought to this absurdity. Charlie-Charlie, a fellow of wide acquaintance among society’s shadow side, had sent me his best. Any others would be inferior. It was true that Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff could enter and leave my office unseen, granting us a greater degree of security than possible in diners and public parks. There remained an insuperable problem.

  “All you say may be true, but my partners and clients alike enter this office daily. How do I explain the presence of two strangers?”

  “That is easily done, Mr. Cuff, is it not?” said Mr. Clubb.

  “Indeed it is,” said his partner. “Our experience has given us two infallible and complementary methods. The first of these is the installation of a screen to shield us from the view of those who visit this office.”

  I said, “You intend to hide behind a screen.”

  “During those periods when it is necessary for us to be on-site.”

  “Are you and Mr. Clubb capable of perfect silence? Do you never shuffle your feet, do you never cough?”

  “You could justify our presence within these sacrosanct confines by the single manner most calculated to draw over Mr. Clubb and myself a blanket of respectable, anonymous impersonality.”

  “You wish to be introduced as my lawyers?” I asked.

  “I invite you to consider a word,” said Mr. Cuff. “Hold it steadily in your mind. Remark the inviolability that distinguishes those it identifies, measure its
effect upon those who hear it. The word of which I speak, sir, is this: Consultant.”

  I opened my mouth to object and found I could not.

  Every profession occasionally must draw upon the resources of impartial experts—consultants. Every institution of every kind has known the visitations of persons answerable only to the top and given access to all departments—consultants. Consultants are supposed to be invisible. Again I opened my mouth, this time to say, “Gentlemen, we are in business.” I picked up my telephone and asked Mrs. Rampage to order immediate delivery from Bloomingdale’s of an ornamental screen and then to remove the breakfast tray.

  Eyes agleam with approval, Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff stepped forward to clasp my hand.

  “We are in business,” said Mr. Clubb.

  “Which is by way of saying,” said Mr. Cuff, “jointly dedicated to a sacred purpose.”

  Mrs. Rampage entered, circled to the side of my desk, and gave my visitors a glance of deep-dyed wariness. Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff looked heavenward. “About the screen,” she said. “Bloomingdale’s wants to know if you would prefer one six feet high in a black-and-red Chinese pattern or one ten feet high, Art Deco, in ochers, teals, and taupes.”

  My barnies nodded together at the heavens. “The latter, please, Mrs. Rampage,” I said. “Have it delivered this afternoon, regardless of cost, and place it beside the table for the use of these gentlemen, Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff, highly regarded consultants to the financial industry. That table shall be their command post.”

  “Consultants,” she said. “Oh.”

  The barnies dipped their heads. Much relaxed, Mrs. Rampage asked if I expected great changes in the future.

  “We shall see,” I said. “I wish you to extend every cooperation to these gentlemen. I need not remind you, I know, that change is the first law of life.”